


Butterscotch

by orphan_account



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: M/M, mentions of sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-10-29 08:25:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10850181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Shaolin is insanely jealous of Mylene. Because she's right, he does want Zeke.





	Butterscotch

**Author's Note:**

> Idek, this is a little silly guys. Hope you enjoy it anyway! Also...my rap....yeah, it's bad. Pretty bad, consider yourself warned.

 

 

Mylene Cruz is an angel. A disco superstar and it isn't even that she's a disco superstar because she was an angel before that. Smooth brown skin and curves and someone who doesn't let the shadows inside her. 

There's shadows inside him.

Shaolin Fantastic, forever been spastic.

He's always tried his hardest to hide them. He's mostly succeeded. It's enough they don't know the nature of the shadows, even if they can see the rot spilling out from inside him. 

Mylene is pristine, Zeke's beautiful butterscotch queen.

So of course when she bitches him out for being in love with Zeke, she's right. Because she's right about everything. 

She's right about how Shaolin is nothing too, and that he's only going to drag Zeke down.

 

 

When Shaolin has time to himself - which is really just the time before he goes to bed - he thinks up nicknames of what Zeke would call him if he loved him.

Chocolate is sweet, and too light. Chocolate syrup is the wrong shade. Fudge and brownies too obtuse.

Shao guesses the only thing that suits him is something burnt and unpleasant stuck to the bottom of a pan.

Burnt Butterscotch. Unwanted edges. _Shit_.

There's other things he thinks about that he doesn't want to admit to either.

Like how Zeke's breath would feel fanned across his face, or the warmth of his hands.

 

 

Zeke's so _proud_ of Mylene. And why shouldn't he be? She's legit. She's on television, acknowledged, loved.

All Shao has is the underground. He can't put The Get Down Brothers on television. If he thinks too hard about it - which he doesn't - he knows he can't do shit for them. 

All the money comes from drugs. From Annie.

Shaolin, however much he wants it, cannot generate revenue from the music. And yeah - he has nicer clothes, a bike. Because he's trying so hard to keep up the image of what he's sold them and he's fucking terrified of when they see through it. Shaolin Fantastic The Lady Killing Romantic.

He winks, fucking winks at Annie one night. Tries to spin it like he's in control. The illusion is the only thing keeping him together. Otherwise he becomes that fucked up little homeless street rat and he's not going back to that.

So yeah - he takes the money and he makes sure he looks good. 

He'll deny it's because Mylene always makes sure she looks good. Hopes Books doesn't notice how his threads get better in proportion to his Disco Queen's as her star rises.

 

 

Even Clarence likes Mylene better. No - Clarence _loves_ Mylene.

Shaolin can't even hope to be _liked_.

The man waxes poetic about her voice, her grace and her style. Her fucking mystique and what he wouldn't do to make her happy. To have her on his label.

He doesn't want them - doesn't want Shao and of course they're not brothers, Shaolin's aware even if it's been a decade - on his label.

Nearly kills a full club of people just to prove it.

 

 

All Shao wanted was a brother. He met Billy in a boy's home and thought - but that didn't turn out, because everything Shao ever begins to think is good turns out to be about fucking _sex_ which he _hates_. And at least with Miss Annie it's not so physically damaging - is something he can hide and deny and somedays he'd almost thought he loved her.

He met Clarence and he thought - and at least it isn't sex but it's something dark and hateful. The way Cadillac bullies him, when he's drinking or high, how he holds him down and threatens him until Shao can feel Cadillac's chest pressing into him just from breathing. It's oppressive. And it's a fool's hope. Cadillac will never accept him.

He met Zeke and - he remembers thinking third time's a charm.

 

 

Shaolin acts like he's the main event because if he doesn't it isn't going to take them long to see they don't need him. They could have Napoleon spinning for them inside of a week. Grandmaster Flash? Irreplaceable. Shaolin Fantastic? Not so much.

Books is right, his words are the show.

Mylene knows that too. She knows it differently, from love notes and poems and college essays. 

But Mylene is wrong sometimes and it heartens Shaolin to know that. He didn't break Ezekiel's heart (he'd never) that first time they had met. And Ezekiel had saved her and _her friends_ like a knight in shining armour and she still made him cry, made him think he wasn't worth shit. Shaolin wasn't the one who told everyone he was single so coldly on television with all Ezekiel's friends watching. 

Still, he was the one who told him to get lost, to cross the street if he ever saw him again. He was the one to hold a knife to his throat. He was the one to get him involved in dumping a dead kid. He was the one to drag him into Fat Annie's world. He was the one to ruin his scholarship. 

It's a wonder, that Ezekiel stays near him at all.

 

 

He doesn't like fire. Remembers the smell of his momma's burning flesh. He hates that Cadillac knows and Ezekiel doesn't. Just like his name.

Mylene tells Zeke everything. Even Shao knows about her crazy abusive pop. Her questionable parentage. Her roller uncle and cheating mom.

Shao, Ezekiel aside, would still trade places with her in a heartbeat.

 

 

He knows it shows. How desperately jealous he is of her. 

Shaolin is not even good at sex. Certainly not in any way that would matter with Zeke. Shaolin's never especially cared if he was _good_ for all the people that got ahold of him because _fuck them_. 

Mylene, who jerks her hips presses down and moans, makes him want to be. Because she is what Zeke wants and she is good at sex. Zeke is whispering words into her ear and -

Zeke makes him want to be.

He never actually believed Zeke would bring her here, not for this.

Every time she's here Shao is surprised at the fact that Princess Mylene has deigned to lower herself so far as to come to Shaolin's burnt out homeless mansion.

Shaolin squeaks then. Startles them. Stumbles out the door and actually fucking stutters out an apology. He trips over something and lands with a hard thump. Gives himself a bloody nose and hisses when he hits his funny bone.

Zeke is helping him up in the next moment, wrapped in a sheet, still visibly...excited and Shao hates how he feels.

He feels triumphant (knows it's fucking petty and that's why he's beneath her) when Mylene appears in the doorway, scowl on her face. She glares and very nearly growls at Shaolin but it's only when she's looking at Zeke that her face truly comes alive with fury.

"Zeke!"

"Mylene, what?" he says sharply. 

She storms off back into Zeke's meager bedroom.

"Fuck, you okay?" Zeke asks, grabs Shao's chin and tilts it up to stop the blood.

"Fine Books. You should get your girl."

 

 

The best and worst things happen the night the Get Down brothers _break the locks_.

It's like they're flying. Like peace and unity are things that actually exist, are things that are for Shao. Things that aren't restricted to pretty faces and clean pasts. It's at that moment, that he truly becomes a believer. Believes that everything, maybe one day soon, will be okay. Zeke smiles at him and it's full of _love_. 

Even Cadillac relents, very nearly calls them brothers.

It seems incredibly naive, in retrospect, to have believed everything would just turn out fine. He hadn't counted on Boo getting arrested. Since when do the police care about drugs being dealt in the Bronx? Except of course it has to be Annie. He hadn't counted on Dizzie already knowing. Dizzie, who shrugs sadly, says Boo's always been a wild one.

The look on Ra's face nearly guts him. 

Zeke's out the door before he even gets to see his expression, his eyes stuck on Ra.

Napoleon comes in at the wrong moment. He has soda pops but they drop out of his arms as he reads the room. Sees Boo is missing.

"Is he dead?" Napoleon asks expressionlessly, pale as a ghost, and that seems to rouse Ra.

"It ain't that bad." Dizzie says. "He got picked up for distributing. Come on Ra, we gotta get home before Mom and Dad hear it from someone else."

Shao's out the door the next instant.

 

 

Zeke would never disown Mylene. Mylene would never do what Shaolin did. 

He gives Zeke every reason he can think of to stay.

Even dredges up _Curtis_. Who has long since been dead and a name which Shao had swore would never cross his lips again.

It isn't enough. He isn't enough. Of course Curtis wouldn't be enough, he's his worst. It hurts though that not even Shaolin, his best, is enough.

He almost hits Zeke, almost beats him with his fists.

He's always had trouble striking back so he should have known he couldn't do it. Still though, the stunned fear on Zeke's face gives him satisfaction. Mylene could never put that look on his face.

He finds it isn't an honor he wants.

 

 

He goes with Annie because there isn't any reason not to. In fact there are five good reasons he should. Books, Boo, Ra, Dizzie and Napoleon.

He wants to think Mylene would never sacrifice herself for Zeke like he has. Not the same girl Zeke had cried over who had dumped him because he didn't have a ticket out of the Bronx. 

Of course, anything Shaolin can do Mylene could probably do better.

She probably would sacrifice herself, would probably become a sainted martyr who people prayed to. Would find a way out and back to Zeke. And her suffering would mean more because she isn't _Curtis_.

He probably deserves everything he gets.

 

 

It seems worse somehow, than before. Now that he knows what living felt like, what love felt like. 

Still though, he doesn't think he's broken. _I am the game_ he repeats to himself in the mirror sometimes. He pleases Annie, touches her skin and kisses her cheek. Absorbs every bit of errant love - or something that he can twist in his head to make it seem like - that Annie gives him. 

She's been more of a mother to him than his own mother. 

He'd always been hyper aware of that fact, even if he hasn't always been appreciative. 

He doesn't like what they do. Annie's always been so big, not just in size, that she eclipses everything else in Shao's life. He imagines Zeke feels the same way about Mylene.

He loses himself in her. He winks and clumsily flirts. She touches him soft and sometimes he likes when she takes control. So he doesn't have to do anything, doesn't have to think or feel, can blank out.

He scrubs himself so hard in the shower he bleeds sometimes.

It doesn't make him feel any cleaner. 

 

 

After a week Ra turns up at the club. Shaolin is wrapped around Annie at the card table like some cheap piece of arm candy.

"Now what is a sweet young thing like you doing here?" Annie asks him.

"It's not just me." Ra says, and it's then that the bodyguards at the door are overwhelmed. It's the Grandmasters and B-boys. Shaolin feels his heart stutter in his chest.

A lot of things are said, mostly threats, and Annie bares her teeth a couple of times. 

Mylene, even if she deserved a white knight to come and save her, probably wouldn't have needed one. Little broken down Curtis does. He can't bring himself to care though, at that moment. Because Ra and the others are there and they are there for _him_. It almost doesn't matter that Zeke isn't amongst them.

 

 

Mylene comes around first. The Kiplings let him and Napoleon stay with them. Yolanda is always having Regina and Mylene over. Mylene, who flies in from LA for weekends on a whim.

Under all her makeup and glitz she still just looks like a child to him, innocent.

She glares at him coldly the first time. 

"Look, you may have everyone else fooled. But not me. Zeke kicked you to the curb for a reason."

It hurts.

But it hurts more to sleep in Boo's bed while he's gone and Shaolin is the one responsible.

 

 

Shaolin gets a letter from Boo around the same time Dizzie and Ra get a letter from Zeke. Of course, they're perfect friends. And their loyalty has always lived with Zeke, not Shao, so they don't show him. They do leave it lying carelessly around though.

Shaolin doesn't read it. Remembers the last time he did something like that.

_My best friend Shaolin Fantastic is a fucking fantastic drug dealer._

Regrets it. Doesn't want to read the cold words lurking in wait for him this time around. 

Boo's letter is silly and colorful. Shaolin worries a little when Boo lays out his concerns, but he'd be more worried if he didn't. Now he knows he has a good cellmate in juvie, at least. Another young drug runner who takes Boo under his wing, tells him to turn his life around since he got a good family.

Shaolin hopes the message sticks this time. Boo has trouble with a few guards though, has a hot temper and a reputation for it. Thinks the food is poisoning him. His main concern though is another boy there, who is quiet and shell shocked. Boo thinks he's a prostitute. Doesn't quite say it like that. What he does say is that he thinks he's been forced into something. And that he recognizes Shao in him. Recognizes the mute trauma of Napoleon.

At the end of the letter is an apology.

_I'm fucking dumb Shao. I miss you and I love you, my brother. I should never have put you in that position. All this time I been looking at you, up to you, and I think I ain't never seen you._

He doesn't cry but it's a near thing.

Boo's parents talk to him about options. Are shocked when he tells them he hasn't been to school since he was nine. Napoleon hates that he's forced into a square classroom. Shao almost thinks he has it easier.

 

 

It's probably the GED that does it. Suddenly Mylene does a 180. She watches him from the doorway for awhile before he notices. He's struggling. The books they give him are big and they make no fucking sense.

"What are you stuck on?" She asks him in a quiet tone when he's reread the page for the tenth time.

Mylene's so fucking perfect that she doesn't need a knight in shining armour. She is the knight in shining armour.

She sits down next to him and quietly plods along, working through the page, explaining things.

"You good at this books shit too." Shaolin says. 

She would be. Her and Zeke make a perfect couple.

She smiles at him hesitantly as if she can't believe she's smiling at him. He ducks his head.

 

 

It becomes something of a ritual. Until one day they're laughing together over a badly drawn textbook picture and it seems natural. Shaolin smiles widely, can't help it. Mylene has that power over people. She smiles back just as brightly, looks a little wistful.

"You know," she says, "you got a really pretty smile."

There's some kind of shift in the atmosphere at that. It makes Shaolin twitch in discomfort. 

It figures, the first time he's ever had a crush on a girl, out of all the girls in the world it has to be Book's girl. It's just a crush though, a small little flutter in his stomach. It's nothing compared to what he felt - still feels - for Zeke.

 

 

Zeke comes back for Christmas break and Shaolin is not prepared for it. He wants to ghost, because of course Ezekiel is going to be spending most of his time with the Kiplings. And it's a stark reminder that Zeke was there first, means more to the Kiplings than Shao does, or ever will.

He shouldn't be ungrateful. Mylene isn't, when she begins to be the odd one out of her cozy Soul Madonna threesome. But he isn't as good as her, never will be. His palms sweat.

Zeke shows up with Mylene on his arm.

Shaolin expects him to cuss him out maybe, or ignore him stone faced and grim, but he doesn't. He seems just as nervous as Shaolin feels. 

"Hey." He nods coolly at him. Shaolin nods back, doesn't try to engage him.

Supper is wild, loud and colorful and Shaolin is glad so that he doesn't have to focus so much on Zeke, can barely even see him at his place on the other side of the table.

He goes out to the fire escape for a cigarette though, and Zeke's there at the window when he turns to go inside.

Zeke climbs out and dangles his legs off the edge.  

"I'm so smooth with Mylene." he says. And yeah, he is. Shaolin's heard him wax poetic about his Butterscotch Queen more times than he's cared to count. "But you Shao? You always got me tongue tied when it really matters."

"Alright." Shaolin says, just to say something. So he isn't standing awkwardly by in silence.

"You're not empty inside, and you're not broken. You're the fullest person I've ever met. You _extra_." 

The complement causes his face to heat. 

"This mean you forgive me?" he asks, just to be certain. Hates that there's something like hope in his voice.

"If you can forgive me." Zeke smiles up at him, a little fractured. "I said family, and I - I sure ain't been acting like family."

Shaolin takes a seat beside him.

"How's Connecticut?"

"Mylene and I aren't seeing each other anymore." 

The non sequitur makes Shao's head spin.

"I'm sorry Books." is what he says.

"Naw, don't be sorry." Zeke presses their shoulders together. "Mylene's smitten with you, you know. She's been singing your praises for weeks now."

Shao ducks his head at that. Tries not to show how pleased he is.

"And I - you know they told me everything?" Shao doesn't meet Zeke's pressing gaze and it's only a moment before Zeke's taking in the city again, "Not til after. Didn't want to disrupt my schooling. I- fuck this is hard, I wanted to ask about Annie? And about school? They said you haven't been to school since you were nine?"

Something sticks in Shaolin's throat. He doesn't want to talk about any of that.

"Jeez Books, what is it with the twenty questions? I think I asked first how Connecticut was?"

Zeke, with his dark soulful eyes, sees through him. Regards him a little sadly.

"It can wait." Zeke swallows hard then and Shao watches his adam's apple bob up and down. "I wrote something for you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He sounds nervous, but determined.

"Well let's hear it Books." Shao still has to prompt him.

" _Shaolin Fantastic /_ _mystic, magic_

 _A boy named Curtis  /_ _becomes a legend_

 _At streets and hearts vertex /_ _He's on the edge and_

 _he's all soul /_ _sweet like sugar_

_a balm to make me whole_

_My Cocoa King /_ _on top of the city_

_without him_

_None of these words have meaning._ "

Later when Zeke is blowing smoke into his mouth and kissing him intermittently, arm around him, he turns it over in his head.

Cocoa King.

It sounds a little fruity, a little wack. Like he's the King of breakfast Cocoa puffs or some shit. 

 

He loves it.

 

 

 

 


End file.
